The 5th Auckland Triennial

In describing our part of the Lab to friends of mine, they all tend to echo the same sentiments: “that’s really relevant right now”. And of course they are right. Auckland is growing at an unprecedented speed for this country, and the discussion around how we will house our population has been fast and furious over the past year. But hasn’t this always been the case? Aren’t we constantly reinventing our ideal vision of the home through policy, art, architecture and media?

Our studio in the Lab aims to engage with the idea of an Ideal way of living – an ideal home. Together with fourteen very dedicated architectural students from the University of Auckland, Melanie Pau and I are using the format of the Lab as a mechanism for discussing future ideal homes in Auckland. What will the ideal home be like in 15 or 20 years, or even tomorrow?

In the past our collective vision of the ideal kiwi home has centred around this idea of the ‘quarter acre dream’. A suburban paradise where one could be in complete control of one’s own patch of the earth. Where the expression, “not in my backyard” takes its origin... It is precisely this backyard which I find to be particularly important in our conception of the ideal. The relationship between the architecture and the landscape is what characterises our way of living in Auckland. I believe it is by exploring how we can reconfigure this relationship, that we can propose new ways of living in Auckland which respond to the challenges we face.

Our Lab looks to propose fourteen individual projects for a single site in Hepburn Street, alongside four installations. Each catering for a diverse range of client types that are developing through our increased population and decreased affordability. The fourteen projects demonstrate the scope of approaches that could be taken to the redefinition of housing by attending to this issue of architecture and landscape. We look forward to welcoming you into our discussion from the 20th of May.